What to Do Before Training Franchisees on Financials

When Field Coaches start training franchisees, it’s common to start by diving into hard skills like scorecards, financials, and metrics. What often gets overlooked in that process is the crucial first steps of cultivating the right mindset around growth and selling.

Don’t get us wrong. Financials, KPIs, and scorecards are a huge part of a franchisee’s success, and Field Coaches supporting franchisees on those aspects of their business makes a major difference in their performance.

But what happens when a franchisee gains skills around financials when they have deep-rooted fears around growth and getting out in their community to drive traffic to their business?

All those financial skills and scorecard understanding won’t make a difference.

Creating Buy-In to Growth

If a franchisee feels like growth will mean MORE time spent working hard doing the operations of their business, they’ll immediately be turned off to the idea of taking the steps towards business growth.

We see this happen in all kinds of franchise systems. Franchisees are so busy working IN their business that they don’t even think about taking a step back to work ON their business. They may not even know that is an option.

With this stagnant mindset, the idea of hiring someone to take on the daily tasks of operating the business may be met by thoughts like: “I can’t afford to hire someone to do these tasks”. 

But with a growth mindset, the idea of bringing in someone to alleviate their time working IN the business would be met with a thought like: “If I hire this person, could we make enough money to make it worth the salary cost? What are the steps to do that?”

When franchisees understand that working ON the business will actually mean they’re working LESS instead of more… That’s when the growth mindset really starts to kick in.

Having conversations with your franchisee about their views on business growth and how they feel about taking a step away from the daily operations will help you as a Field Coach get your franchisee on the right track with their mindset.

Mindset Is Everything

Okay, so now your franchisee is excited about growing their business and you’ve worked through some (very common) fears about what will happen as they grow.

The other aspect of mindset for a franchisee is to overcome any fears of putting yourself out there in your community to sell.

Most people don’t want to be that gross car salesman who is constantly pitching. Most people don’t like the idea of selling at all. But as a franchisee, your job is to sell.

That’s one way to look at it. 

The other (slightly more palatable) way to think of the role of a franchisee is that a franchisee should be the go-to person for their solution in their community. 

If you clean houses, you want to be the #1 person in your community for clean homes. That doesn’t mean constantly pitching — it means going out and building relationships in your community and not being afraid to say: “Hey. If you know someone who needs home cleaning, give me a call.”

Getting franchisees clear on the WHY behind community marketing and building relationships is a big step toward their business success. If they don’t see the need to get out in the community, they will have a very hard time succeeding.

Overcoming Fears Around Selling

Here are a few of the things that franchise owners often feel fear around when it comes to putting themselves out there in their community:

• Fear of coming on too strong
• Fear of rejection
• Fear of being an annoying car salesman
• Fear of failing
• Fear of not knowing what to do

Addressing these fears is often a lengthy process that needs to be continuously worked on even throughout years of coaching. But some things that work well are:

Addressing that selling is not bad or dirty.

Selling is providing a solution to those who have a specific problem. Being known in your community is a great thing! It’s pretty much like your job is to go out and make new friends.

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Field Coaches should provide detailed instructions on how franchisees can talk to people in their community — using example scripts or even role-playing in coaching sessions to practice.

“No” is not a bad word.

The very worst thing that happens is someone says no. That’s it. Someone doesn’t need their house cleaned? That’s okay. It happens, and maybe they’ll change their mind — or maybe they’ll see examples of your work and realize they actually would love to have their house cleaned!

Someone has to do it.

It’s best if it is the franchise owner going out in their community, but in certain situations (a franchisee is genuinely not skilled or comfortable with creating connections) someone else on the team may be a better fit — perhaps a GM or sales director.

When you start with these crucial mindset steps and then dive into the financials, scorecards, and KPIs, your franchisees will be better prepared to take action and use those skills in their business.

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Have more questions about how to best support and coach your franchisees? We discuss topics just like these in the weekly AC Roundtables — collaborative virtual calls where peers learn from each other and problem-solve together.

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